Category Archives: Diving

East Coast Divers Annual Picnic

by

Today was the East Coast Divers Annual Picnic at Sandwich Town Beach. They’ve been doing it the first weekend in August for as long as I’ve been diving, and probably before that. For the past several years, it’s been co-hosted by several other dive shops. There were around 200 people there, including a bunch of familiar faces. This year was the last year Paul Adler was hosting; Nick and Alex are taking over the store at the end of September.

Sandwich Town Beach is a very easy dive site once you have all the gear on the beach.  A lot of people gear up at their cars in the parking lot; I’ve done that myself some years, but this year, with the heat and humidity, I felt it was better to gear up on the beach. It’s a sandy beach, with a gentle slope down to the water. It’s on Cape Cod Bay, near the canal, so there isn’t much surf. Underwater, it’s a mix of sand and clay. The clayey parts are filed with holes and burrows created by the animals there.

This year, I was diving with Henri Menco and JP Falcone, both of whom were on the Bonaire trip with me. Henri did the first dive, and JP did both dives.

The thing that struck me this year was how many jellyfish were in the water. There were tons of the them; little ones about half the size of your hand. I tried several times to get pictures of them, with mixed success. The best ones, with the strobe pulled in closer to them, have quite a bit of backscatter; the others are too dark.

Aside from the jellyfish, there were several flounder, some crabs, and a couple of small lobsters. JP saw a large lobster in a hole in the second dive, but couldn’t get it out.

FlounderJellyfishSea Robin?JellyfishLobsterHermit CrabMoon SnailSmall Fish HidingOne-Clawed Crab

After the second dive, I did a drift though the tidal creek that runs behind the beach; if you hit the tide right, which I did, the outgoing tide will take you through the marsh. Near the end of the drift, I saw a striped bass right below me.

 

 

Pebble Beach

by

I did another pair of dives at Pebble Beach yesterday, this time as part of the East Coast Divers shore dive. It was good to see Ken Apple, who was running the dive, again.

For me, Pebble is not a particularly edifying site because you have a fairly long swim over the sand to get to the reefs, and getting into the water over all the cobbles can be hard. It was a little easier the first dive since the tide was low enough that the water’s edge was right at the sand.

Mostly what we saw was crabs. Lots of crabs, big and small.

Crab

Crab

Crab in the kelp

Crab in the kelp

 

Sand Collar

Sand Collar

Last week, at Folly, I shot a number of pictures of this thing, which I was vaguely aware was some sort of egg casing. I didn’t know what had made it, so I turned to my friend Ralph Fuller, of Poseidon’s Web, who identified it as a “sand collar”, an egg casing left by moon snails. I was a little surprised, because it doesn’t look at all snail shaped, and because it’s bigger than most moon snails I’ve seen.

Well, now I’m certainly a believer, because I saw the biggest moon snail I’ve ever seen. It’s very easy to see how it could have created something like that:

Moon Snail

One of the biggest moon snails I’ve seen

I was diving with very new divers; Sam on the first dive, and Sam and Phillip on the second; both were newly certified. On the second dive, Philip managed to startle and grab a small lobster; he made his first lobster catch.

Philip's first catch

Philip’s first catch. (Not a keeper.)

Folly Cove

Gallery

by
Starfish

This gallery contains 6 photos.

After several weeks of being out of commission due to a cold and back and shoulder problems, I’m finally able to do stuff on my days off again. Today I did the East Coast Divers shore dive to Folly Cove. The first dive was on the left hand side. The left side of Folly is a steep rocky cliff; and there used to be tons of anemones there. Then one year, there were none. Today, I finally saw a few today; the first ones I’ve seen at Folly in a long time. Continue reading →

Bonaire Pictures: Thursday

Gallery

by
Hawksbill Turtle

This gallery contains 12 photos.

Thursday was a pair of boat dives, Pink Beach, and Paul’s steak dinner. We were about a hundred yards from the site called Rappel when a boat from another resort swooped in and beat us to the mooring, but almost … Continue reading →

Bonaire Pictures: Tuesday

Gallery

by
Entrance to Weber's Joy/Witch's Hut

This gallery contains 18 photos.

Tuesday morning I did Weber’s Joy with the Hinzes and Alec and Nick, Tuesday afternoon, the Nolans, Henri Menco and I did Dee Scarr’s Touch the Sea program, and in the evening, I did a dusk dive with Jack and … Continue reading →

Post Trip Reflections

by

I’ve been back now for a few days, and am slowly settling back into normal life. But I had such a good time on the trip, I keep casting my mind back to it.

The Diving

The diving was great. The water was a little murkier than usual, but that’s only in comparison to its usual clarity–by New England standards, it was still awesome. I don’t recall seeing baitballs before this trip, and I saw three of them.

I’m wondering if the boat dives are worth the schedule constraints they place on your day, though. The shore diving is so good, you can see a lot of the same stuff from the shore that you can see from the boat, the one obvious exception being Rappel. When you have a boat dive, you have to be at the dock at a certain time. With shore dives, there’s more flexibility.

My one big regret is not doing Karpata on Tuesday. It’s a site I’ve been wanting to get back to since 2004, but because I was scheduled for Dee Scarr at 2, I felt I would have been cutting things too close. It’s really a marginal call, and I’m not sure I made the right decision. The group ended up getting back by 1:30, which would have been tight, but doable. I thought it would have been later.

I was very obviously overweighted the whole trip. Because I was using 18lbs last trip, and have put on weight (fat) since then, that’s where I started, and by Tuesday, it was very obvious I was carrying too much lead. Because of the way the schedule worked out, I wasn’t able to trade down until Wednesday afternoon, when I dropped two pounds. I was still overweighted, but by the time I realized that it was really too late.

Blogging

I’m glad I kept this blog during this trip, even though it cost me a little over an hour a day. I kept a blog in 2010 also (though not on this site), and in 2004 created a site shortly after the trip. By contrast, I didn’t do anything like that in 2006, and that trip is a lot less distinct in my mind. I would recommend to anyone that they keep some sort of record of their trip, even if it doesn’t wind up on the web. I don’t have any illusions that many people were reading this; but I’ll be able to re-read these posts in a couple of years and remember.

Photography

For this trip, I bought a new camera, a Canon G12, and I’d also gotten a new strobe last summer to replace one I’d flooded. I’m happy to report, that first of all, camera and strobe both survived the trip. Perhaps I transferred my bad luck; both Paul and Jack flooded cameras. I did find out about an additional cause of flooding, at least for polycarbonate housings–if left in the sun, they can get hot, then when they hit the water, they shrink abruptly and can leak.

Overall, I’m happy with the combination. The strobe covers well, and I got a sense fairly early on how much to adjust the power output or ISO to get decent exposure. I did have some issues with the strobe not firing; I suspect a lot had to do with the sync knob getting out of position. The camera still has some shutter lag issues, but not as bad as its predecessor.

I’m still seeing a lot of fish tails in my pictures. Also, I distinctly remember taking lots of pictures of sponges and corals because I thought they were interesting shapes. It turns out, not so much. Also, I thought I was shooting RAW, but wasn’t, so things aren’t as adjustable as I thought they were. I’ll post more pictures once I have then properly adjusted.

One thing I did right was to assemble the entire system before the trip and figure out the correct basic settings, and figure out where the controls I would mostly be using were located. Henri was having trouble with her strobe all week, thinking it was an aiming problem, when actually the sync setting for the strobe was incorrect. We didn’t discover that until Thursday night. Personally, I think the instructor for her class should have spotted this, but he didn’t.

The other thing I sometimes did right was to recognize when I wouldn’t be able make a satisfactory picture with the gear I had, lower the camera, and simply enjoy what I was seeing.

 On the Surface

I greatly enjoyed the drives we took around the island. The northern end is very scenic; it it was good to get out of the resort and look around. I think I could easily spend a day just driving around and taking pictures.

The Trip

On the flight down, we flew just to the east of the Florida coast, and was able to recognize and take a picture of Launch Complex 39

Launch Complex 39

Launch Complex 39. The two pads are near the coast, and you can see the roads leading back to the Vehicle Assembly Building

 

I picked up a neck wallet before the trip. It worked out great–I didn’t have to worry about documents falling out of my pockets when I took something out of them.

One thing I’d do differently is mark my bags better. The big LL Bean bag with my gear was pretty recognizable, but the small suitcase with my clothes was hard to spot. In Atlanta, I saw one set of luggage with dog paws painted all over it. That  was a little over the top, but the basic idea was good.

Paths Not Taken

One of the problems with this trip is that there is so much to do and not enough time to do it in. Things I’d like to have done but didn’t find the time for were a dawn dive, a walk through Kralendijk, Lac Bay, Karpata, a look at the Eastern shore, and more non-resort shore diving. One of these years I’d like to be able to afford to come for two weeks and do more.